Egypt says top militant killed

Egypt says top militant killed

CAIRO: Egyptian armed forces killed a leading member of the country’s Daesh affiliate in a shootout outside his North Sinai home, the army spokesman said in a statement on Saturday.Selim Suleiman Al-Haram, identified in the statement as a leader of the militant group known as Sinai Province, was asked to turn himself in by a group of soldiers that surrounded his house in the town of Sheikh Zuweid, the army said.He refused, opening fire on the troops and attempting to blow himself up before being shot dead, the army said.Meanwhile, an Egyptian court postponed its verdict expected on Saturday in the trial of Al-Qaeda chief Ayman Al-Zawahiri’s brother and 66 others accused of forming a “terrorist group” to carry out attacks.State news agency MENA said the court in Cairo would announce its verdict on August 10 to allow for “further deliberations.”Mohamed Al-Zawahiri was arrested in August 2013.Egypt is battling an increasingly brazen insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula that has killed hundreds of police officers and soldiers since the army toppled President Muhammad Mursi in 2013 after mass protests against his rule.President Abdel Fattah El-Sissi has said militancy poses an existential threat to Egypt, the most populous Arab country.Sinai Province, which has pledged allegiance to Daesh, claimed responsibility last week for a bombing that the army said killed four soldiers near Rafah, a town on the border with the Gaza Strip.The group claimed responsibility earlier this month for a rocket attack on an Egyptian naval vessel near the coast of Israel and Gaza, less than a week after claiming a bombing in Cairo that heavily damaged the Italian Consulate.

CAIRO: Several people were killed Thursday when a gas tank exploded at an Egyptian fertilizer factory on the Red Sea coast, according to medical and security sources.
No official toll from the incident in Ain Sokhna has been confirmed, but medics told AFP 10 bodies had been received at a nearby morgue following an incident.